


Meant To Be (Arse First)

by BayouSexual



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Attempt at Humor, Bad Jokes, Bum Jokes, Clubbing, Drinking, First Meetings, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Funny, I somehow managed to forget Liam in this so lets pretend he's zayns soulmate who he hasnt found yet, Larry Soul Mate Exchange, M/M, Meet-Cute, Romantic Soulmates, So much barely humorous humor, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, mentions of a bender, the word hanky-panky is used in this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:14:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26642011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BayouSexual/pseuds/BayouSexual
Summary: Zayn groans in response, and Louis can hear the slow rustle of his bed sheets in the background. “Is it another ‘you woke up in the back parking lot of a Tesco’s with no pants and I need to come get you before the cops do’ panic or more of a 'I can stay in my bed and lend you an ear’ kind of panic, because I drank a lot more than you did last night, Lou.”“Uhh,” Louis replies eloquently, “more like an 'I have two giant, blood red handprints on my naked arse, and no, they aren't from a good shag’ kind of panic.”------Or the one where your soulmate mark appears on your body where they first touch you and stays there until they touch you for the first time.Aka the one where Louis's soulmate must like bums.
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan/Barbara Palvin
Comments: 39
Kudos: 291
Collections: Larry Soulmate Fic Exchange 2020





	Meant To Be (Arse First)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beautifully_cyan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautifully_cyan/gifts).



> Prompt from Beautifully_cyan:  
> His whole life Louis always wondered why his soulmate just had to first place his hand on his ass. Of all places his ass. Seriously future husband?
> 
> Or the one where your soulmate's handprint is painted on your body, only visible to you, of where they first touch you and stays there until they touch you for the first time.
> 
> \--------  
> Hey, I played a bit with this prompt and I hope you like it. I was delighted to be able to pinch hit for this fic exchange! 
> 
> I've been out of the fandom for a hot minute, and its ironic that I came back on the same note I left (soulmate fic). I really hope you enjoy this, I took it the quirky route and tried to keep it lighthearted and humorous.
> 
> Shoutout to C for the beta and C2 for the britpicking.

Soulmate marks are a funny thing, devious really. Most (sane) people even consider them a nasty trick from the universe— that unknown and unnamed force that has the _audacity_ to think it knows best. The marks, that it deems a _gift,_ can crop up at any place, at any time, and are almost always inconvenient. They can also come in any shape, and any size, considering they simply mark the first place your ‘soulmate’ is supposed to touch you, and since they only seem to pop up when you're close to actually meeting said ‘soulmate’ they have the potential to pop up at the most innapropriate of times. 

Louis’s soulmark seeps into existence on a Sunday afternoon, scant weeks past his twenty-seventh birthday—and subsequent mid-life crisis—right as he’s stepping out of the shower. It takes several minutes, and several passes past the fogged-up mirror, for it to sink in that there is something not-quite-right about his backside. 

At first, he thinks it's leftovers from the rough and drunken, not to mention ill-advised, club hook-up he had last week. That guy was _horribly_ handsy, and, even for a one-off, he acted like an absolute prick toward Louis’s bum. It was all ‘peachy’ this and ‘plummy’ that as he kept grotesquely comparing it to every fruit in the market while smacking it raw. _Don't get him wrong_ , Louis likes a little spanky in his hanky-panky, but there's like, a hard-set line between ‘creepy butt fetish’ and 'I'll treat your ass right.’ _The guy was definitely the former._

So, when Louis sees two bold red handprints emblazoned on his cheeks, each one firmly and starkly on each side, it takes a moment to absorb what he's actually seeing. 

“No. Oh, no no no.” Louis says aloud, grabbing a towel from the shower door and rubbing at the handprints desperately. It's pure instinct and panic telling him to try and see if they’ll come off, but they don’t budge and they're not sore. He groans. “ _Fuck.”_

 _Soulmate marks._ Of all the blasted places, and all the blasted things, Louis has handprints on his arse for soulmate marks. He stares at them, half-turned in a back breaking stance, because frankly, he isn't sure what else to do. _This is the last thing he needs right now,_ or at least that's what he tells himself, _he can't handle it._

He's on his second new job in as many months, he’s fresh off a bender strong enough to make his nan’s nan disappointed, he's _twenty-freaking-seven,_ and now he has to watch out for the universe flinging him the perfect person—the perfect _man—_ to suit his needs? _Impossible_. This shite’s only supposed to happen in bad rom-coms, but honestly, at the rate life has been throwing him curve-balls lately, he can't tell if he's even surprised. 

He grabs his dirty clothes from the floor and digs through them before he can think further about what he's doing. It takes longer than it should to fish out his phone, unlock it, and flip it to the correct contact. It feels like it takes even longer for Zayn to pick up on the other end. 

“‘Lo?” Zayn’s voice is sickly low and dripping with sleep, because of course he's still asleep at three p.m. on a Sunday. _Luxurious bastard._

“You better wake the fuck up, Malik, because the universe has gone completely insane while you were asleep!” Louis practically shouts into the receiver, and he can visualize Zayn’s wince, but right now he has a right to be loud. Then he says a bit more rationally, “I think I'm about to panic about it, actually.” 

Zayn groans in response, and Louis can hear the slow rustle of his bed sheets in the background. “Is it another ‘you woke up in the back parking lot of a Tesco’s with no pants and I need to come get you before the cops do’ panic or more of a 'I can stay in my bed and lend you an ear’ kind of panic, because I drank a _lot_ more than you did last night, Lou.” 

“Uhh,” Louis replies eloquently, “more like an 'I have two giant, blood red handprints on my naked arse, and no, they aren't from a good shag’ kind of panic.”

There’s a significant beat of silence, before Louis hears more rustling.

“You mean?” Zayn half-questions, “Are they—”

“Yup.” Louis cuts him off with a pop. “In all their glory.”

“Shit, Lou,” Zayn says, and Louis can picture the look on his face; a bit wide-eyed, slightly bewildered, and totally in shock. They've had the particular if-when conversations before, about precisely what to do if Louis ever popped a soulmate mark, but none of those talks were sufficiently preparatory for _this._ “Wait, did you say on your _arse_?” Zayn whistles, “That's ambitious.”

“ _Quite_.” Louis winces.

There's another silence, a bit heavier than the last, where they both—or at least Louis does—contemplate the implications.

Zayn once again breaks it. “Geez, Lou. What are you going to do?” 

Louis bites his lip and closes his eyes. 

“I guess I'll have to do what everyone else does when they’re faced with this particularly nasty bit of the universe, Z. I'll _look_.” 

—————

“This just isn't working!” Louis yells over the music. The club lights are flashing around the booth they’re seated in, and he doesn't know if Niall can even hear him as the other man absolutely drains his tankard of two-bit ale to the beat of Cascada. “I've been trying to get my bum touched for _weeks_ now, it’s soul-shattering!” 

Niall finally lowers his glass and wipes a bit of foam from his upper lip. 

“I think you're overthinking it, mate!” He yells back, and Louis frowns. 

“What else am I supposed to do?!” He picks up his own drink, some blue-green concoction that smells a bit like cough medicine and tastes a bit like regret, and tries not to drown in it. The drinks here are truly unfortunate, and he, for once, wishes they were at one of the posher establishments Zayn always drags them to, but they’re not. They’re _here_ , and Louis’s arse is still decidedly _untouched_ . “I don't know what the universe wants, and I'm one horrid dancefloor encounter away from flying into a homicidal rage!” He swirls his drink, still contemplating how bad it tastes. “I swear before all this started it felt like I got groped left and right, and now it’s like I get everything but! For christ’s sake, I got my _ear_ licked yesterday, and I’m pretty sure even the universe doesn’t approve of that!”

Niall laughs—more guffawing if anything—loud enough that it blends with _Everytime We Touch_ in a truly haunting harmony. Louis finally takes another sip of his toxic waste and tries to understand what’s so funny about his misfortune. 

“Maybe,” Niall shouts, “just maybe, you’re trying _too_ hard! I did that, with mine you know, but the minute I decided to just sit back and wait, my soulmate fell right into my lap. Literally!” 

“Yeah, yeah.” Louis groans, not caring enough to really yell anymore as the music finally starts to fade into a new song, “If I hear about how you met Barbs one more time, I swear I’ll lose my religion all over this booth. I was _there._ ” He gets it, he does, Niall met his soulmate and it made him _happy,_ but he found her after only eight days. Louis’s been out here for almost eighteen now and it just feels like a tragedy, okay? He’s never had any patience, but kudos to Niall for assuming he can start. “It's just,” he sighs and runs his free hand over his face for good measure, “what am I supposed to do _while_ waiting?! It’s not like I can just stop thinking about it.” 

Niall simply snorts and raises his empty mug to signal a waitress.

“Well, that one’s easy enough.” He nods toward Louis’s glass. “ _You can drink!_ ”

————

It takes longer—a lot longer—than Louis cares to admit for his surroundings to right themselves the next morning. His head is pounding and he’s so lost in the duvet that he barely knows if he still has legs, let alone whose flat he’s woken up in. But by the time he’s up and stumbling around for his phone, things begin to look familiar. The path he took to get to _Zayn’s_ however, remains a bit of a blur. 

Louis remembers shots. _Oh lord, he remembers shots_ . The ones he liked, the ones he didn’t like, and the ones Niall poured down his throat by force, but after the third or fourth round of chaos everything becomes a blank slate. He’s sure Zayn finally arrived at some point, since he obviously brought Louis back to his, but Louis still plans to have words with him about leaving people alone with Niall for any length of time, particularly about how he’s _never_ to leave Louis alone with Niall _ever again_. 

Louis clicks the button on his phone to check the time and he can’t help but whimper. The battery is almost dead, and the time stamp blinks up at him pathetically letting him know it’s already past eleven. 

“Oh, _fuck all._ ”

 _No more going out on weeknights,_ he thinks bitterly, _soulmate or no soulmate._ He’s over an hour late to work already, and he can’t quite afford to lose another job this year, so he throws his clothes on as quickly as possible. He does pause—barely—to make sure the handprints on his bum _are_ in fact still there, and sighs in vague relief when they are. As desperate as he is to meet his destiny and get it all over with, he figures not remembering it would have complicated things a bit. He pauses again on his way through the kitchen, chugging down half a bottle of water and leaving it beside a short note on Zayn’s counter—not that Zayn will wake up to read it anytime soon—instead of wasting what little life his phone has left on a ‘hey I skipped out’ text. 

He makes it all of two blocks, having opted to walk instead of catch a cab, before it settles in that he’s still, somehow, a little bit intoxicated. Not a lot, but enough to curse Niall under his breath for the millionth time. He truly has no idea how one person can drink so much, nor how one person can convince _other people_ to drink so much. Louis would chalk it up to genetics, but he’s seen Niall drink other Irishmen under the table too, and unlike Zayn—who’s definitely as down for the count as Louis this morning if the snores echoing in his flat were any indication—Niall’s probably already had breakfast and is regaling his girlfriend with the tales of last night in perfect clarity. _Bastard._

The more Louis thinks about it the less willing he is to risk staggering into work like this. He can only, too vividly, imagine the speech he’d get right before they’d let him go, so he digs his phone out of his coat pocket and silently prays that it at least has enough battery left for him to call in. 

He wracks his brain for any believable excuse other than ‘ _I have soulmate marks on my bum and I irresponsibly got drunk about it on a Tuesday_ ’ as he squints at his contact list trying to remember what he put his new boss under. Of course, this means he’s completely unaware of his surroundings and not at all watching where he’s going. He only sees that something is in his way after his already aching forehead is connecting with the iron signpost outside a bakeshop. The sickening thud is enough to knock the remaining drunkenness right out of him, and he half-yells in pain as he tumbles backwards. 

The struggle for balance is truly awkward with spots now coating his vision, and he doesn’t even register that he’s falling until he’s already being caught. It takes another yelp— _not his own_ —and a decided weight against his back for him to realize he has, quite literally, landed in someone’s arms. 

Unfortunately, he’s not in the right mindset to spew the appropriate apologies, and instead says, “ _Seven-sam-buggering-hells_ can this day get any worse!?”

“I’m sorry,” an extremely low, practically subsonic, voice says in his ear and Louis shudders as he feels himself being gently righted. “Are you okay?”

 _Okay?_ Louis laughs involuntarily as he wobbles and blinks manically, turning around the best he can to face his poor savior. “I guess I’m just fucking aces at this point, mate.” 

“Uhm. Alright.” The stranger replies softly to Louis’s malice, as he repositions his—absurdly large feeling—hands to Louis’s shoulders, still keeping him steady. 

Then, when Louis’s vision clears, he’s immediately struck dumb for the second time, because—honestly— _wow_. His gaze focuses on bright green eyes and the soft brown curls falling into them, before he’s able to take in the rest of the man as a whole. 

_Good god, he’s fit_ , Louis thinks blearily, then as his head renews its pounding, _right, so I probably have a concussion._ He tries to make his eyes focus on anything but the man’s rather soft-looking mouth, or the hint of tattoos peeking over his shirt collar, trailing them instead along the fabric of the absolutely heinous brown coat the guy happens to be wearing. He follows it’s sleeve all the way down to one of the hands gripping his shoulder and has to blink again for entirely different reasons.

“Nice mittens.” Louis states blankly, because of course the type of fit man who gallantly saves people from falling on their arse in the street, is also the type who wears a ridiculously ugly coat with mittens. _Pink mittens._ _In public_. If Louis wasn’t aching to end this encounter—and this entire day—he’d probably have more salient thoughts about that. 

“Er, thanks? I think?” The guy says, more as a question than a statement when he finally lets go of Louis and awkwardly drops one hand to his side, using the other to motion vaguely to his own forehead. “Are you sure you’re okay? Like, your head n’stuff?”

“Oh!” Something in Louis’s brain grinds against itself and at last clicks into the correct gear. “Yeah, sorry about that. The, um, falling bit. I’m completely _fine_ .” He waves his phone—that’s thankfully still in his hand—around like it proves anything about his alright-ness. “I’ve actually got somewhere to be,” he winces, this guy probably thinks he’s losing it, “or, uh, to _call_. So, I should... go do that.” 

“If you’re sure…” The guy trails off like he wants to say more, maybe introduce himself, but Louis is already turned and casting a shadow as he walks away.

————

Louis steps out of the shower a bit later feeling entirely reinvigorated. His work actually believed he’s laid up with a stomach ailment, apparently something’s going around, so the day isn’t all bad luck. His head still feels like it might detonate, but he stood under the spray as long as his hot water would allow, and now it’s significantly less urgent in its throbbing. 

Or, it was, before he drops his towel and walks innocently past his mirror. It’s ironic really, how the exact moment he notices that something is _wrong_ , perfectly reflects the same movements he made two weeks ago and he whips his head back so sharply to look again that he might as well have ripped it off his shoulders. 

“You’ve _got_ to be kidding me.” He says aloud for the universe, who is apparently determined to end him. 

He stares at his bum with increasing panic. The distinctly bright red handprints that marred his flesh only hours earlier, and have caused his unending amount of grief these past couple weeks, are suddenly nowhere to be found. Louis dry swallows and lets out a distressed wheeze as he grapples for his sink in order to steady himself. 

_Oh no,_ he thinks frantically, because the marks only disappear when you find your soulmate or they, like, _die_ . And while it would be just his kind of fortune that whatever arse-grabbing freak he was meant to meet conveniently got smashed by a bus or hit by a train while Louis was searching desperately for him, it just doesn't seem practical _._

So, he starts going back over his morning in his head slowly, step by agonizing step, trying to dislodge a memory without agitating his returning headache, and he reaches the only logical conclusion. _Oh._

“Fuck!” Cursing out loud doesn’t relieve the anxious knot growing steadily in his stomach, but it gives him something to do while he flails out into his bedroom in search of his phone. “Fuck, fuck, _fuck!_ ” 

Zayn, for once, answers by the third ring, but Louis doesn’t give him time to relay a greeting before he’s shouting into the receiver.

“Would you believe I just discovered that my soulmate marks are _missing,_ in almost the exact same way I found out they _existed!?_ Because I have!” He grabs his pants from the floor and starts throwing them on without taking a breath. “Which means I definitely met my soulmate on the street this morning after knocking myself half-ignorant on a fucking signpost _._ He _caught me_ , the gallant bastard, with these unfairly giant hands. _Arse first_ apparently! And I didn’t even notice! His big, meaty paws were all over my bum and I was more worried about work, Z, of all things,” Louis almost trips and finally has to breathe as he straightens to look for a shirt, “it didn’t even register that his bloody thumbs were perfectly aligned with the marks of my blasted destiny!” He pauses, tilting his head to the side “I’m trying to decide if it’s okay to lose my mind now.”

“Uh,” Zayn finally says on the other end, sounding a bit off-kilter, and honestly, who blames him? Louis just dumped a lot of information rather quickly. It’s a lot to process. “What?” 

Louis almost growls in frustration, “And he had mittens on, Zayn! Mittens. I met my soulmate, he touched my arse, he had on pink mittens. I don’t know how I can make this any clearer!” 

“Okay, okay, calm down!” Zayn groans, which isn’t encouraging, “We’ve really got to stop having these conversations when I’m hungover. It’s unsettling.” 

“The _entire_ universe is unsettling!” Louis grits back, finally pulling his arm through the sleeve of a jumper he found on the floor. “I should’ve just called Niall.” 

That apparently gets through whatever processing issues Zayn is experiencing. 

“No, Lou, _god_ ,” Louis hears the tell-tale shifting that means Zayn is getting up from wherever he is (which is probably still bed, no matter how fast he answered the phone). “Look, just get over here and, like, give me an hour, yeah?” He says with uncertainty, “I’m sure you’re not actually processing this any better than me right now, and I get that. You need me to be supportive or whatever. You can grab Niall on the way, fill him in, and in the meantime I’ll try to come up with some plan or other to, I don’t know, _re_ -find this soulmate of yours. I promise” 

At least Zayn seems to finally understand the urgency. Louis tries his best to untense his shoulders about it. “Okay. _Fine._ ” 

————

The plan, that for some reason took them two hours to actually agree on after Zayn half-formed it, brings them back to the bakeshop two blocks from Zayn’s flat. He’s not sure if the newly-forming bruise on his forehead aches more from the memory of hitting the post or from how cold the weather’s turning, but he knows it’s certainly not helping his nerves. 

“This feels ridiculous.” He says, looking back at Zayn and Niall who are propped side by side against the building behind the cursed signpost, and they look to be shivering as badly as Louis is. “Which one of you convinced me that coming back here was a good idea?” 

“Both of us?” Zayn shrugs, “I figure it's the universe that sets this stuff in motion, right? So there’s a pretty good chance your soulmate might walk through here pretty often or something.” He drops the cigarette he’s smoking to the ground and shoves his hands into his pockets before stomping it out. “We’ve said what we want about the universe over the years, and soulmates, and how weird it all is, but even you’ve got to admit the system seems to like convenience _._ At least, it did with Niall and Barbs. So, coming back here seems only logical.”

“Yeah , yeah, fuck logic.” Louis huffs and leans back against the signpost, “What about this has screamed convenient to you? I literally found my soulmate already _and didn’t even notice._ ” 

Zayn manages to wince at that. “I don’t know what else to tell you, Lou, it’s not like we’ve been through this before. Niall’s set-up was pretty standard, and I don’t know anyone else with a soulmate yet. All the plans and if-whens we used to come up with about this stuff honestly went out the window when your marks showed up on your _arse_.” 

“Oh! I think I might have an idea actually!” Niall who has been uncharacteristically quiet suddenly breaks in before Louis can retort, eyes scanning the street around them frantically before meeting Louis’s with a sparkle. “Why don’t you just describe your soulmate to people? If Zayn ends up being right, and your soulmate comes through here a lot, someone’s got to recognize him, right?” 

“Oh _god_ ,” Louis groans and tilts his head toward the sky, silently asking the universe to please just spare him. “I am _not_ describing my soulmate, nor any other part of this horrid situation, to strangers on the street, Niall. I’m anxious enough as it is!” 

“I don’t know. I think it could work.” Zayn says cooly, taking Niall’s side with practiced ease. “And what’s the harm if it doesn’t? Right now we aren’t doing more than standing around waiting for the sky to fall or something. Niall’s idea seems more productive.” 

“You’re both awful,” Louis hisses after a moment's pause, and he tries to take a deep breath in to calm down. He’s getting antsy, and the thought of describing the man who caught him to people, over and over, with no guarantee of finding him, honestly makes him want to hurl. “I wish the sky would fall! Or at least that the universe would just stop being so bloody difficult and, I don’t know, drop him in my lap like it dropped me in his arms this morning!” 

“Look,” Niall says, a pitying expression crossing his face, “I know how rough it is, on the soulmate search, you know I do, but I really think this could be your best shot, Lou.” He gestures to all the people around them. “There’s plenty of people here, someone’s bound to have seen him at some point.”

“Yeah,” Zayn agrees again, bringing one hand out of his pocket to gesture somewhere behind Louis, “besides one of the guys from my uni is coming up behind you right now, and we can start with him.” Zayn states matter of factly, and his gesture turns into a wave before he shouts, “Hey! Harry! Over here!” 

Suddenly, something makes Louis’s stomach drop to his feet. Slowly—very slowly—he turns to face his fate and begin the hunt. Except—

 _Holy shite the universe is really sick and fucking twisted innit,_ Louis thinks, because the person he sees behind him, coming toward them now in alarming clarity, is none other than the bloke with the ugly brown coat and pink mittens. _Louis’s fucking_ _soulmate_. 

The guy— _Harry apparently_ —doesn’t look alarmed or even surprised as he stumbles up to Zayn with familiarity. Louis finds himself struck quite dumb about it. 

“Hey.” The same deep voice Louis remembers from this morning drawls with excitement, and one of those heinously large, mitten covered ( _how_ has Zayn not noticed the mittens) hands reaches out to grasp Zayn’s shoulder and pull him into a half-hug. “How’ve you been!?” 

Time must go flat—or stop or still or whatever time does in important moments—because Louis sees Zayn go through the motions of introductions between them all, gesturing to them and the like, he just doesn’t manage to hear a single word that’s said. He’s too busy drilling a hole through the side of Harry’s head with his eyes, ears ringing and mouth gaping open like a fish. _The universe better find this funny,_ he thinks, _because it’s one hell of a cosmic joke_. 

After what feels like a tortuous eternity, Harry finally turns toward Louis, a pinched look overcoming his face as the speed of things returns to normal. 

“Er,” Harry says cautiously, “Haven’t we met, actually?” 

Louis blinks, still not managing to do anything other than gape. 

“Earlier, I mean,” Harry continues, likely assuming Louis’s expression is just him trying to process, which _it is_ , just not the way Harry thinks, “when you, uh... _fell_.”

Niall’s eyes suddenly widen in Louis’s peripheral, the realization swiftly clicking into place for him and then for Zayn too. 

“Holy shit, wait—”

“You mean he’s—

They speak at the same time, but neither gets to finish because Louis’s brain decides this is the perfect moment to connect to his mouth, and he blurts;

“You’re the bloke who touched my bum!” 

Harry’s eyes widen then too, a faint blush rushing to his cheeks, and he opens his mouth like he’s about to apologize, but Louis is already trying to cover the blunder.

“Wait, no! That’s not what I meant.” He doesn’t know what he means, _fucking shite_ . He takes a deep breath in and decides _fuck it, we die like men._ “Look, I’m terribly sorry, and this is going to be horribly awkward, but I had soulmate marks this morning—”

“On his arse.” Niall interjects helpfully, and Louis glares.

“—on my _arse_ , yes, but, well...” Louis continues, trying to just power forward and get everything out in one go, “...then I fell, and _you_ caught me, right? And your hands, um...”

He trails off long enough to squint up at Harry, hoping that he’s processing between the lines and Louis won’t have to actually have to come out and say it. Luckily, something like shock registers very swiftly on Harry’s face, and he does this strange little shuffle in place before throwing both of his hands out in front of him and staring at them wide eyed. 

“Oh my god!” He all, but shouts, voice going slightly high. Then he’s ripping off the damn mittens, letting them flop to the ground, and turns his hands back and forth repeatedly. “Holy crap! I didn’t—”

He cuts himself off with a strangle, looking back at Louis, then over to Niall and Zayn as he visibly makes an attempt to relax, hands staying in front of him.

“I had them too.” He says, much more calmly. Then he clears his throat and lowers his hands. “Soulmate marks, I mean. I’ve been wearing mittens for like two weeks because they showed up on both palms, and, well, it made me nervous to look at them all day. So I sort of never take the mittens off, not even in class. If I had’ve maybe it would’ve registered earlier today...” He pauses, eyes widening again, “..when I touched your bum, with both hands. I’m sorry.” 

“No need to apologize.” Louis responds, dry swallowing as he bends to pick up Harry’s discarded mittens and hold them out between them, “You touching my bum was actually the least of my worries. _Soulmate._ ” 

Harry’s cheeks turn as pink as the mittens as he takes them, shoving them gently in his pockets. Louis is sure his own cheeks match. 

“Uh,” Zayn interrupts the moment they _almost_ share, “not that this isn’t beautiful and perfect, and _exactly_ what we hoped for when we came out here, but I think I’m going to take Niall here and head out.”

“Yeah,” Niall agrees with a grin, “you two should probably grab a bite or something anyway. I hear there’s a bang-up little bakeshop somewhere on this street,” he pauses to throw Louis an exaggerated wink, “though I’d maybe watch out for the signpost this time.” 

Louis doesn’t even bother shooing them both off. He simply looks back up at Harry and sees his own hope reflected in green eyes. 

“What do you say? Wanna grab a scone or two and maybe discuss how you groped me a little further?” He asks Harry with a grin of his own.

Harry’s answering smile is the best thing he’s seen all day.

“Sure. _Soulmate._ ”

_FIN._

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed :)


End file.
